I am Alfreda Daniels, Co-founder of Black Immigrant Collective, an organization that was founded by mostly women, black immigrant women. And our mission is to elevate and amplify the voices of black immigrants. We’ve been around about three, four years now. 

I picked this because it gave me a lot of mixed emotions. Being an immigrant myself who migrated here, looking at it is like, it looked very familiar in many different ways. It reminded me of slavery. Um, so forced migration. And then, it reminded me of how actually some people migrated here. 

It doesn’t look like there’s a lot of consent from the folks who pictures were taken in this. So that’s what I mean by like a lot of mixed emotions, because it looks like people are not at their highest spot in life, but their lowest, and their pictures are taken without any consent.

Artist is taking the picture from a distance, and I’m actually seeing that he’s capturing a lot of like the heat waves, more than like faces. Maybe consent would mean like actually having the full picture and people are okay with that and explaining to them the reason why these pictures are taken. 

And being an immigrant myself, I would look back at some of my pictures in the refugee camp and actually appreciate that. But the fact that it was taken, knowing that I’m taking this to look back on, that picture gave me a lot of pride. Then if I would have Google myself someday and seen a picture of myself on the refugee camp in, you know, without knowing that that picture was taken, it would bring a lot of shame, I think, to me. And even though their faces are not shown here, I still can’t ignore the fact that these are people that are actually now about to be displayed for folks to watch.

And for me, it just show this image that most people just migrate here when they are at this lowest place. Some people migrate here, they actually buy their own plane ticket, and they’re in suits when they come here. But they are immigrants. It’s not always like this. 

Think consent in most cases is, it can be given, like asking people and actually explaining to them the reason for this. Yeah, I don’t know how that’s sat with me when I saw this. But besides that, it does remind me of a lot of moments in the history of immigration and slavery that just provided this mixed emotions.

In a lot of my work, I work, you can imagine, with a lot of different people. There are some stories sometimes that we have to share that people may feel empathy and sympathy for someone. And other people may see that, and, and be connected to it so many ways and say, “I have been there before.” And other people may say, “This is the reason why I want to fight.” 

Usually when we show maybe something similar or share a story with people who are mostly Caucasian, white, we first try to make them understand that the people are human and that this is not the full story. This is just a single story of that area. Other people may have a different experience to it. Or the person whose story we are telling may hope that you have a different reaction to it.

Being clear about why we’re showing it in the first place, I think it’s usually helpful. I’m like, “I’m sharing this story with you, because I want you to understand this is the struggle that some people go through.” Or, “I’m sharing this with you, so you can understand that even though we went through the struggle, like we are we are here, and this is home.” That usually help people connect to it differently.

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